1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a blanking apparatus, a drawing apparatus, and a method of manufacturing an article.
2. Description of the Related Art
A drawing apparatus which performs drawing on a substrate by using a plurality of charged particle beams is known as one apparatus used in a manufacturing process (lithography process) for a semiconductor device, or the like. Along with recent micropatterning of semiconductor devices, the drawing apparatus needs to increase the drawing precision so as to form a pattern at a target position on a substrate at high precision. In particular, the drawing apparatus needs to increase the drawing precision at the edge of a pattern formed on a substrate. For this purpose, it is important to control the doses of charged particles irradiating respective positions on a substrate.
Japanese Patent No. 4858745 has proposed a drawing apparatus which changes the number of charged particle beams multi-irradiating the same position on a substrate, thereby performing gradation control on a charged particle beam dose (to be also referred to as a dose simply) at this position.
Japanese Patent No. 4858745 is premised on that the intensities of a plurality of charged particle beams capable of irradiating the same position on a substrate are uniform. However, the intensities of a plurality of charged particle beams are rarely uniform. In practice, the intensities of a plurality of charged particle beams vary. The variation in the intensities of a plurality of charged particle beams may make it difficult to perform gradation control at high precision on doses of irradiation at respective positions on a substrate.